Why do I need an Employment Brand?

Shawnee Love   •  
October 4, 2010

After reading last week’s Employment Brand blog, did you ask yourself why you even need an employment brand? The current unemployment rate means it is an “employer’s market” and you get your pick of the crop so to speak because even dodgy jobs are getting 100+ applications nowadays.

You make a good point and there isn’t an easy answer for you. But consider this:

You have an employment brand whether you like it or not. It used to be called your reputation. I don’t know when your company’s reputation became its brand, but it has. I recently was invited to speak to a group of laid off workers, and they were talking about their personal brands and how they related to their potential employers’ brands, so the metamorphosis is done.

If you can accept that your company has a reputation and that a company’s reputation acts similar to an individual’s reputation, e.g., think back to high school when there were the jocks, burnouts and brainiacs. If you were a jock, you attracted other jocks and jock wanna-be’s, you scared off non-jocks, and you did jock things.

A company’s reputation has the same impact. If you have a brand as a great place to work (remember great doesn’t mean cushy because the greatest gift you can give your employees is success), then you attract great employees, scare off the not-so-great (they can’t keep up), and do great things.  Your reputation sets your reality.

Much like a reputation, our brand precedes us and follows us and is very difficult to change. Instead of asking why we need a brand, we are better to ask what we want our brand to be.